Through the Unending Loggias of Budapest
by Leara Fiera
Summary: Sequel to 'Through Debris and Declarations'. "Why do I seem to always be cleaning up your messes?" he whispered hastily over his shoulder, seeing the gunmen tighten the grips on their weapons. He felt the brocade fabric bury itself against his lower back. He could hear the smile on her lips and the teasing note in her voice. "I thought you liked my messes." Clintasha if you squint.


**A/N:** It's so clichéd, but here's two things in one. a) sequel to 'Through Debris and Declarations' which is this short thing I did about a month ago, which it can be read without, but it's recommendable and won't take up your time. Some events are mentioned in this piece but it can be read as stand-alone. It's also b) a Budapest story. It may not be as classically romantic, and I don't think I've quite done the characters (and their writers and creators) justice, but I had a go at it anyway. I hope you'll enjoy and I'd be more than gleefully happy if you left a review!

**Disclaimer: **I don't own these characters or their natural habitat.

**Credit:** The wonderful and ever-lovely Norimn agreed to beta this. Thank you, dearliest darling.

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**Through Debris and Declarations (2): **

**Through the Unending Loggias of Budapest**

With Natasha's assurances that they would be fine and Clint's insistences that he was all healed, it was no wonder that the situation escalated to a point beyond their control. The situation got out of hand more quickly than they had ever prepared themselves for, and soon Natasha's head had been re-calibrated and Clint was limping worse than the original injury.

Truth was, their S.H.I.E.L.D. handler, Agent Phil Coulson, had been aware that they were less than recovered from the stunt they'd pulled five weeks ago in Cartagena, but their behavior and interactions with the physical therapists had grown increasingly irascible. Their scores at the gym and at the shooting range were up to their usual prime—not totally unexpected of their best operatives—and he had been authorized to send them back into the field in a low-risk operation. They'd memorized their mission priorities during the briefing and gone to prepare their individual mission objectives.

That was three weeks ago and, estimating from the state of Natasha's appearance, half a wedding gown ago.

They were dodging bullets and making a run for it in the ornamental loggias. All Clint could hear were bullets ricocheting off brick stones and his own heartbeat in his ears, louder than he'd ever thought possible. Feeling something – a bullet, most likely – hitting and knocking his quiver off balance, he mentally cursed. Steps behind him, and only due to the damn full skirt of the unsubtle bridal gown that looked like it belonged in the last century or the century before that, ran Natasha, wind blowing in the thick veil and aim steadier than it had been in a while.

They reached the end of the loggia and he kicked more than pushed the wooden, carving-adorned door open, only to see that another long loggia followed, framed by thick tall bushes that would prove impossible to mount or hurdle. Neither of them had to exchange gazes to continue the wild and wrong end of a passionate pursuit.

Clint hadn't seen much of his partner during his recovery; it wasn't unusual seeing as they had quarters on opposite ends of the compound and frequented the facilities at different schedules. He'd been authorized, albeit reluctantly, by an unbiased doctor with medical training to fieldwork. In their line of work, there were no unnecessary sick days, and they had both volunteered for field ops as soon as they'd gotten a clean bill of health from their respective doctors—both, Clint now realized, obtained under the threats of physical harm. He should have known. He surely had known Natasha long enough, had _doctored_ Natasha long enough to know she'd consider herself fit for duty long before her muscles stopped aching. It was how she operated.

He cursed himself for hoping she'd rested and recuperated like a normal person when he'd followed her example to the letter. He couldn't even follow his own advice. Natasha made it her personal job to remind him when he did things like that, and mocked him for it. Now they were sprinting under the canopied hallways, the rain dropping alongside them and on the tin roof like a shower of bullets. His heart was stuck in his throat and his chest hurt from a lucky shot one of the target's numerous – but unreported – bodyguards had managed to fire and hit the standard-issue (for S.H.I.E.L.D., anyway, as he doubted they were accessible to everyone) Kevlar vest. It had knocked out the air of his lungs but he'd continued, aimlessly firing in the general direction of their pursuers until he'd regained his breath and aim, pain from his side notwithstanding.

He'd been sent as backup and had been the shadow of Talia Stohl, the name S.H.I.E.L.D.'s friendly neighborhood temptress and assassin had been sent in with. He'd watched from his crappy and agency-provided apartment as she'd made her routines and final preparations for her big wedding to businessman and money launderer Yonatan Kardos. Even he had been astounded by the speed at which Natasha worked, only to find that it was a long-running joint operation that his partner worked on with an American officer. Coulson had thought it was low-risk mission; even if it was a high priority that she'd been—based on the photos of the happy couple in the compiled bridesmaids collaborations—working for over a year. Kardos had been unsuspecting as she rejoined him. The only comfort he had in the assignment was that he'd been allowed to bring along his customized compound bow and quiver, both of which he was acutely aware of as they continued their hasty escape.

Fuck. Everything had gone as planned, and then _this_ had happened. He didn't have the time to enjoy to view of the beautiful dawning city or the fact that S.H.I.E.L.D. had finally gotten Nat in a fucking wedding dress, because bullets were flying by their ears and the aim of the pursuers seemed to grow more accurate by each minute.

Tasha twisted around and didn't hesitate; she'd let go of her skirts, allowing them to fall like some snow-white, ivory river on the cobblestones (seeing as she was no longer running, the risk of falling seemed an assessed minimum) so she'd have both hands free as she raised her trustworthy guns like some yielder of death and fired at will, rounds from the Glock 26s flying as they resumed their flight, her hands re-clutching the skirts.

"I don't suppose your prenuptials covered situations like this?" he shouted to be overheard in the gunfight. He didn't expect an answer but wasn't surprised as she screwed up her face in a mad version of a smile.

"No," she insisted, her breath equally labored from running – with effort, he supposed, eyeing the long and numerous skirts of the wedding gown. It had looked puffy and beautiful from his scope during the ceremony but now proved difficult in the extraction.

Neither of them had known how it had gone wrong. Natasha had already come up with countless suggestions as to how Kardos and his men had known. The veil fanned out behind her as she ran, no longer worrying about being elegant and beautiful like a typical bride.

He nocked an arrow and watched it fly by one of the pursuers' ears and explode upon impact with one of the supporting columns from an era long passed. The roof of the loggia quaked and rocked but the only falling ceiling was that of his flashbacks. Quickly, he went back to running, hearing rapidly approaching footsteps and the unmistakable angry shouts of bad guys who had been scorned by the likes of S.H.I.E.L.D. It meant that they were doing their jobs right, but Clint could have lived without the absence of secrecy.

They reached a dead end and he felt his eyes widen in disbelief. They were on the second floor on what had once been the scouting position of a fortress or a chateau, now a modern day decent view of the waking city below. The dawn sun hit the sequin-like swirling patterns of Tasha's skirt and reflected in the light as if she was a beacon to be worshipped. Frantic, he looked about for an escape, very aware of the dozen men in Kardos' security team that were equipped with capable aims and the guns to back the threat up. His partner had come to the same conclusion, now pointing east to the dawning sun. "There!"

Catching unto her idea and exchanging a determined gaze, he unshouldered his bow and aimed the high-tech arrow in question towards a lower-lying building, holding his arm and shoulders out for her to grab tightly. She did completely without hesitation, and soon the arrowhead buried itself securely into the brick of the building. He putted his bow horizontally across the wire and grabbed unto each end, before ziplining their way to the other building where they'd be more likely to get a head start. Their landing was more of a stumble, and he cut the wire to prevent their pursuers from following the brilliant idea, then followed his partner to cover.

"Shame though, beautiful ceremony," he teased, eyeing her and the rather noticeable diamond ring on her left hand as they, backs against the wall, made their way around the corner and into the streets, receiving weird looks due to the rather unusual outfits. His tuxedo jacket had been lost to make room for his quiver and currently shouldered bow, and Tasha's dress had been torn on a sharp chain-link fence. It hadn't caused them to slow down, and they had lost the element of secrecy forty minutes ago when the extraction had turned messier than predicted.

"You think so?" she sarcastically replied, cringing. "I thought the pink peonies were a little bit over the top."

"Aw," Clint said. "Sounds like trouble in paradise."

"What gave it away, the fourteen men chasing us wielding guns?"

He looked back and identified a tuxedo-wearing bridegroom's participant and aimed, satisfied to see him fall dead, albeit causing distress in the food market stall he fell into. Melons were everywhere. "You wouldn't have matched anyway. He's not your type."

She raised a skeptical eyebrow at the observation, pressing her body against the wall of an alleyway as a group of Kardos' men ran by. "How would you know? You spoke to him for twenty seconds," she hissed with a smile hidden under the drama.

He shrugged. "Takes a guy to know a guy."

"Asshole."

He could only smirk back. "Think of it this way: I saved you from a boring honeymoon."

The Russian assassin rolled her eyes and fled the alleyway, only to be spotted by the group as they retraced their tracks. He saw the leader of the group of butchers lock eyes with Natasha and identified him as Kardos himself by the tone of vindictiveness with which he shouted something too rapidly for Clint to translate. His Hungarian had never been that good. He did, however, manage to loosely understand the meaning of what Natasha replied with as 'death do us part' and then his knowledge of profanities ran out, but he could hear the vehemence in her voice. He grabbed her by the arm as he recognized that fierce look of spitefulness she slipped into and dragged her through a cutesy fabric store, creating a mess and a diversion as rolls of colorful fabrics fell behind them. The shoppers and storeowner screamed in shock at the chaos, but they departed too soon to find out the popular opinion.

They sought refuge in a public garden as the rain began to pour even more forcefully. Tasha's hairdo was ruined, that was for certain, yet he could claim some resemblance to a halo with the embroidered veil as they collapsed into a public bench to catch their breaths. They hadn't seen any of Kardos' men for the past two kilometers. Natasha checked her clip while he eyed his quiver and the sidearm under his pant leg. He stared into thin air as rain poured down. Luckily, people had gone home and weren't bystanders to the shooting. "How much do you have left?"

The bride-to-be wiped her lip with the back of her hand. "One clip and a couple left in this magazine. You?" she inquired numbly as if they were chatting about the weather on a sunny day.

He informed her. "Egress route?" she asked.

Clint shook his head. "As of now, we're on our own. We have to get to the border, though."

"Kardos has men at the border. He has men littered all over the country," she relayed, shoulders sagging but eyes indubitably watching all possible entrances to their temporary refuge.

"Hey, keep the good intel for later," he joked, coughing once as he felt the bruised area where he'd been shot. His ankle was throbbing from exercise and he cursed himself mentally for his own overconfidence. When he looked up, Natasha's face was the same professional one it had been before the joke. Obviously now wasn't the time. It seemed wrong, however, to have such an indifferent facial expression in a bride.

"By now he's called on his cavalry. The pursuers will have doubled if not tripled in the time we've paused."

"He fancy you that much?" It was a rhetorical question. He knew that no sane man would have let Natasha go when they'd only seen her wiles and charm. Hell, he still couldn't and had seen his fair share of what she had been trained as and to.

Eyed bored into his. "No, but he is persistent and won't let this knowledge fall into anybody's hands, especially governmental agencies."

"This guy's serious," he stated and his voice had lost the joking edge. He unsheathed the knife he kept for close-combat missions—he preferred distance himself, but the Widow's missions rarely allowed him that—and handed it to Natasha who looked momentarily taken aback. "Lose the skirt."

She caught on and skillfully slit open the skirt, cutting off unevenly but efficiently three feet of the skirt so it hit her lower thigh. He heard the fabric tear and raised both eyebrows in surprise over how much fabric it took to make a wedding gown. He smirked when he realized how many sessions with the seamstress it had required to endure on her part.

They heard gunfire and flew up from their sitting positions, exchanging gazes with a precision and understanding most combat army units would have envied. Natasha didn't even bother stuffing the remnants of the skirts under the bench as they bolted, only to find themselves surrounded and heavily outnumbered beyond their usual forte. They ended up back-to-back like some old spy movie cliché, guns pointed towards them to the point where they had to put their hands into the air. Clint's mind was assessing possible outcomes—which he was certain his partner's was as well—as a man stepped into view, slightly more fancy in his outfit than the rest, sporting the unmistakable features of Yonatan Kardos, Hungarian businessman, terrorist money launderer and mobster, also known as the fiancé of the woman next to him. He spoke in a low and vengeful Hungarian, addressing his runaway bride, and halfway into the sixth sentence, Clint was clueless as to his words.

Unlike most people at this point, Natasha didn't try to soothe and further seduce Kardos. She'd stripped herself of that choice and option at this point, and now replied in an equally unforgiving tone, saved only for true insults and men she meant to infuriate. Words didn't always have to apply to the latter.

"Why do I seem to always be cleaning up your messes?" he whispered hastily over his shoulder, seeing the gunmen tighten the grips on their weapons.

He felt the brocade fabric bury itself against his lower back. He could hear the smile on her lips and the teasing note in her voice. "I thought you liked my messes."

Kardos had adopted that villainous cliché for talking once he thought his escapees rendered captured, which proved to be his ultimate downfall as Clint felt the blade of his knife being slipped into the palm of his hand from its hiding place in Tasha's sleeve and signaled her to ready herself as he softly tackled her knee, bringing her to mid-fall as he twisted around and used what he'd learnt one winter in the knife-thrower's wagon in a perfect demonstration of his aim as a marksman, dropping to his knees to seek cover just as he let go of the weapon, planting the knife deeply into the chest of the surprised but unresponsive Kardos. He offered his arm to his gowned partner just as all hell broke loose when the men realized that their—for most parts—employer was bleeding out or dead on the ground. The momentum was enough for them to create a chaos that enabled them to flee the crowded scene.

"I think I just made you a widow!" he shouted over his shoulder, his mouth cracked wide open in a blatant expression of victory that made his partner roll her eyes in response to his smirk. _You're crazy_, she seemed to say.

She whispered into his ear with a smile on her lips, "That wouldn't be the first time, Barton."

The words sent goose bumps and chills down his spine—but it was the good kind, the enticing kind that made him crave more until his head got on the right track and the chiming bells of a nearby church reminded him of the seemingly impossible task at hand. Frustration overtook the momentary lapse in emotion and he slipped back like an elastic recoil to his professional persona.

"Why isn't S.H.I.E.L.D. here?" Natasha asked in the doorway of an old-looking house s they caught their breaths and sought refuge from the rain that marred the golden day it'd been. She looked at him without scouting for bad guys.

"What would be the fun in that?" Clint replied with half a grin, earning him a sucker-punch he was happy to have her pull. He groaned. "What was _that_ for?" he asked incredulously.

"For creating implausibly inescapable extractions," she stated coolly, looking for something in his responding expression. "_Whilst injured_."

She jabbed him in the chest where he was slowly bruising, causing a moan. He gritted his teeth but said nothing, eyeing the blood that trailed from her left temple. He'd only have to tuck her wavy hair behind her ear to see the scar that rested there as a result of a piece of concrete debris, which had fallen on her as the skyscraper above them had collapsed following detonation of an explosive. He swallowed hard at the memory, trying to blink it away. Trained as she was, she caught unto the expression, reading him like the open book he was to her.

"Has your place been compromised?" she asked bluntly. He raised an eyebrow at her deductive skills. "I noticed someone watching. Would it be weird hoping it'd be you?"

"That's my girl," he whispered like a romantic fool. He looked about. "And it should be, yeah. Isn't it a bit risky?"

"Not riskier than running around in a wedding dress with Kardos' men everywhere. And he wasn't exactly secretive about our engagement."

"Noticed that. Knew the guy had to compensate for something with that many wedding guests."

"He has connections. That's why I was sent here in the first place, Clint."

"So you're not denying the compensating on his part?" he teased.

"I'm not even gonna answer that," she refused as he acting childishly, leaving no hints. Frankly, Clint didn't wish to know about Yonatan Kardos' … equipment, but he liked teasing his partner, even though it would come back and bite him in the ass. Well, so would her comment, he mused.

They passed as eloping lovers for the trek until they reached his crappy apartment on the street across from Talia Stohl's apartment. Luckily nobody seemed to recognize the soaked wedding dress or its wearer, allowing the couple of master assassins to slip into the complex and up the slippery and narrow stairs. He fumbled with a key and let her in, checking for tails before doing the same.

The apartment was furnished in one room and bathroom, a small balcony (with barely room for one full-grown person), and he knew the shower to only hold warm water for one person, even at their standards. Seeing as they were both soaked, he decided to be gentlemanly about it and offer her the warm water.

"Thanks," she said absentmindedly, studying the cracks in the walls (seven), the worn book titles of the sparse bookshelf (neither Tolstoy length, but he'd gone through both of them thrice out of sheer boredom, and he'd never been one for reading) and the general surroundings.

"Well, we can't all marry mobsters with limitless bank accounts," he joked.

"Next time I'll tell Phil you offered. I'm sure the next mobster would approve of that archer body," she said huskily, keeping her eyes lustful and on him one moment, giggling dismissively the next.

He unshouldered his bow and quiver, grabbing a duffel bag from beneath the bed and the messy sheets, throwing the cache of handguns in there along with any S.H.I.E.L.D. equipment they couldn't allow to fall into enemy hands once they were gone. "Hey, Tasha, do you want me to reload your—"

Clint stopped dead in his tracks once he looked up from the box where he'd kept guns stored. The door to the bathroom had been left agape, so he'd assumed she hadn't undressed yet. There went assumptions. She had zipped open the gown and allowed it to fall at her feet, like a swan shedding its coat, which left her completely nude, her back turned to him. His eyes followed the natural curves of her body, from the wavy and soaked hair to the…Dammit. He felt his throat go dry. It was a rule. She turned her head and raised an eyebrow almost bored at him, while he struggled to keep himself from stumbling over the next words and not having his face redden. "I'll—uh,—wait outside."

He closed the door behind him and almost dropped the box. What was wrong? He couldn't wipe the image of that much skin away. He'd seen her without a thread on before, why was it different now? It was no big deal. _No big deal_. He distracted himself with packing rapidly, keeping his eyes on the door to the apartment in an attempt to forget what he'd seen behind the _other_ door. In fact, by the time she returned, wearing a bra and a pair of his sweatpants she'd fetched from his wardrobe at some point (wardrobe, a word for a transportable bag he kept in the closet for emergency extractions), he acted comparatively normal.

She made no mention as he slipped past her and went to take a rather cold but fast shower himself, bringing with him a pile of fresh clothes. When he returned, hair still wet and muscles sore, she stood ready in an oversized version S.H.I.E.L.D. mission civilian wear, duffel bag in one hand, holding out his bow and quiver in the other, a bag with white gauzy fabric sticking out of it on the floor, almost torturously pressed under the table. She was back in mission mode, and whatever had transpired between them had lost momentum. He grabbed his stuff and nodded solemnly, hiding a cheeky smile as they left the apartment, his large leather coat over her narrow shoulders as they left Budapest behind.

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**Reviews are appreciated and very welcome :)**


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